Thursday, September 25, 2008

FIRT-IFTR: Silent Voices/Forbidden Lives - Lisbon

Call for papers for the July '09 conference. Click here for details.The conference theme will include the following related topics: Drama under close scrutiny: where, when and how censorship and other constraints operated on texts and how they affected theatre and performance in generalTheatrical genres: artistic responses to ideological constraints: how certain genres were invented or used to elude political or other forms of inhibitionDancing: confrontations and commitments: social, political, cultural and artistic contexts can favour, challenge or confine choreography and bodily expressionComposing over silence: how music in performance has responded to difficult situations, inhibitions and unfavourable conditionsGendered politics under surveillance: how gender may have proved to be the pretext for blockage, prejudice and concernBodies against boundaries: negotiating the physical presence of the performer, the erotic dimension of their body, the revelation of sickness, deformation, self inflicted pain and other forms that subvert conventional ways of representing the body on stageBreaking theatre walls to reach elsewhere: outdoor performances, unconventional environments, the incitement of audiences to action, invisible theatre, internet explorations, global theatre, confounding boundaries between fiction and reality (by filming intimate scenes as if they were live action)Setting the scene for/against the repressed other: how theatre has represented the other in a recognizable acknowledgement or denial of their existence or how it has illuminated their configurationRegional, national and intercontinental dissensions: is it important to recognise geographical, linguistic and cultural predicament as encouraging its theatrical representation?Dislocated outcries: immigrants’ Voices: immigrant communities or traces of their presence in multiple forms of performancePerforming memories: culture against adversity: how retaining cultural memories can help people preserve and invent their identity in difficult situationsTheatrical disobediences: rejecting conventions and defying expectations to invent other forms of living and expressing human desires and frustrationsSpectres of the invisible or haunting absences: how the dead and the silenced haunt live performanceStrategies of survival under empires: different configurations of hegemony have been opposed by theatre and performance in general. How should we characterise those human and artistic resources created out of cultural predicament? How should we identify and study different artistic strategies in the present and in the past?